SAGE COCK ; COCK OF THE PLAINS. 159 



I 



the common Hen. He never met with them in any forest, 

 nor have they been taken near the coast of California. 



This species was first obtained by Lewis and Clarke's 

 party in their expedition to the Rocky Mountains. It was 

 afterwards met with by Douglas, who published in the 

 Linnaean Transactions (XVI, p. 133), an account ot its 

 habits. He described its flight a slow, unsteady, and as 

 affording but little amusement to the sportsman ; being a 

 succession of flutterings, rather than anything else. They 

 rise hurriedly, giving two or three flaps of the wing, swing- 

 ing from side to side in their movement, and gradually 

 falling, making a whirring sound, at the same time utter- 

 ing a cry of cuck-cuck-cuck, like the common Pheasant. 

 They pair in March and April. 



At the mating-season the male is said to select some 

 small eminence on the banks of streams for the very sin- 

 gular performance it goes through with at that period in 

 the presence of its mate. The wings are lowered and drag- 

 ged on the ground, making a buzzing sound ; the tail, 

 somewhat erect, is spread like a fan, the bare and j^ellow 

 <Bsophagus is inflated to a prodigious size, and said to be- 

 come nearly half as large as its body, while the silky flex- 

 ile feathers on the neck are erected. Assuming this gro- 

 tesque form, the bird proceeds to display a singular variety- 

 of attitudes, at the same time chanting a love-song in a 

 confused and grating, but not an oftensively disagreeable 

 tone, represented as resembling hurr-hurr-hurr-r-r-r-hoo, end- 

 ing in a deep and hollow utterance. 



Their nests were found, by Douglas, on the ground, un- 

 der the shade of Artemisia, or when near streams, among 

 Phalaris arundinacea, and were carefully constructed of dry 

 grass and slender twigs. The eggs are said to be as many 

 as from thirteen to seventeen in number, and the period of 

 incubation to be twenty-one or twenty-two days. The 

 young leave the nest soon after they are hatched. 



In the winter these birds are said to be found in large 

 flocks of several hundreds, in the spring in pairs, and later 

 in the summer and fall in small family groups. They wore 



